She had opened the napkin to steal a look at them and seen, with a shock of revulsion, that they were not her teeth at all.The two rows of gleaming white teeth that were bared in a grinning grimace were Tony's.
She was overcome with nausea and groaned aloud. She was lying on her back and this caused her to wake up with a convulsive jerk, gasping for breath. His face buried in her shoulder, Mischa stirred too.
'Wha's that? What's wrong?'The words came out thick and muffled. His hand caressed her stomach reflexively.
'Oh!' She was still marooned in the terrible landscape of the dream. 'I dreamt all my teeth fell out. One after the other.They wereTony's.It was so awful.'
She pressed herself up against him. He made a soothing noise and wrapped her in his arms. He fell back to sleep instantly.
She'd had versions of this dream before, but not for many years.
In the morning it was light and almost balmy again with just a breath of breeze. April was like that, you could be shivering one day and basking the next. It was never enervating, like the blistering heat of summer, but a more comfortable domestic warmth.
Greer thought the capricious April sun resembled a hibernating animal emerging for a cautious scout around. Or an adolescent person, Agnieszka's daughter, Eva, for example, who, having been stubbornly gloomy for days, surprised you with a burst of transforming effervescence.
Tendrils of sun were beginning to heat the stone on the terrace, bringing the tiny lizards scuttling out in force. But there were still patches of snow on the distant mountain. There remained the possibility of frost, the locals said, until every trace of snow was gone.
She carried her coffee and toast outside. She watched the red tractor chugging in the vineyard directly below, towing a reaper. Mauro, their man of all work, was combing the soil to uproot the grass and spring-clean the roots of the vines. He saw her and waved. Swallows dipped and sailed in front of her, catching the updrafts from the valley. The Virginia creeper on the east wall of Rollo and Guy's house was noticeably greener today, and there were branches of heavy pink blossom on their Judas tree. She thought, mindful of the ironies: all the things around me are starting to come out.
3rd August
Melbourne
We're back in real life. It's evening. It's freezing here, an icy wind was howling as we left the airport.The house was dark and cold, like a portent.Almost feels as if it's going to snow.
I just looked in the mirror. I loathe the way I look. I've changed since we've been away, I think anyone who knew me could see it. C. just thinks I'm exhausted. He fussed round, putting on the heating and getting hot drinks, insisting I had a bath first while he unpacked my things.
It's weird, but my heart feels heavy, like a concrete block in my chest. I'm having panic attacks.The thought of seeing M. doesn't shift this weight, it just gives me palpitations. I'll have to speak to Josie tomorrow before I do anything else.At least then I might have a plan of action, something to put on the table for C.
Before I do anything irrevocable I have to be sure nothing's changed with Mischa. I'll go to him straight after Josie. I feel laden with dread. Heavily laden, and I hate it.
It's all so complicated. Could I be getting cold feet?
Everything might change when he sees me.
She had written in small capitals, after this last sentence:
BUT I DOUBT IT.
'Can I rock up for a mo?' It was Guy, on the path. She closed the diary and covered it with a newspaper.
He leapt up the steps. 'I just spoke to Giulia. Angelo who-is-no-angel-o is coming to start on the pergola when the weather's OK. He wants to know how many mates he should line up. And Jacopo's bringing the forklift on Saturday at eight-thirty prompt.' Jacopo, an errant university student, was one of Giulia's swains.
'Eight-thirty Saturday? Jacopo? In your dreams, dude. Think ten, more likely. Sit down, there's another cup left.' She went inside for the pot.
'All right, dude.You've twisted my arm.'
The small forklift truck would carry their tubs of citrus trees, lemons and limes, grapefruits and mandarins, out into the open from their winter shelter. This was supposed to happen when there was no further chance of frost.
She indicated the distant traces of snow.
'We've had the last frost.' Guy was positive. 'Last night was a shocker, but there still wasn't a trace on the ground this morning.' She was inclined to believe him. He was almost always right about these things.
They talked practicalities. It was a busy time. Olive-pruning and bonfires were in full swing.Vineyard poles and electric fences needed endless repair.The vines were at their most vulnerable now as their tender green shoots, deer magnets, began to bud.
'Giulia's giving Tony a no-holds-barred personalised tour of the winery this morning,' Guy remarked.
'Is she now? Don't worry, I'm sure he's more than capable of defending himself.'
'If he wants to.'
'I thought the feeling of the meeting was he would want to.'
'That's Rollo's take, but he's so hopelessly retro about these things. Young Tonio's not averse to batting for both teams, is my educated guess.You haven't asked me how I thought last night went.'
'How did it go, did you think?'
'I thought it was quite a hoot, didn't you? The food was very good. Aggie's really got the hang of artichokes at long last, after all these years.Weren't you glad you came? In spite of po-faced Barbara. I don't know what Roly sees in her.' He shook his head. 'And what did you make of Larry and June and their pimply son, poor kid? Larry's mutated into the most frightful academic bore. It's blindingly obvious that June can't stand him. I made a bet with His lèse-Majesté that she'll have left him by Christmas.'
Guy stretched.'His blockage has shifted, did he tell you? It must have been the cake. Lo and behold, the royal bowels moved this morning and he's back beavering away in the studio, and may we all be truly thankful, O Lord.'
'Hosanna in the highest.That's very good news.'
'Isn't it just? I was getting desperate.You haven't asked me what I thought of Tony's performance last night. Before your inhibiting arrival, of course. Before best behaviour was resorted to.'
'And how did you rate his performance?'
'Well, interesting you should ask. He was rather good value. Although we didn't get very far in our dutiful quest for info about the work in progress. I did notice that he waited until he thought we were all safely plastered before he started asking anything about Mischa. We threw a few innocuous funnies at him to be going on with. Mischa the techno-klutz who can't change a light bulb, who has to be restrained from bawling "Maria" in karaoke bars – you know the routine. Roly told the one about him being the only guest the Savoy has ever had who actually did etchings but never invited anyone up to see them.'
He swilled his coffee in one go. 'I toyed with the idea of putting a few spanners in the works. Mischa the cross-dresser who likes getting into your frocks.The metrosexual who orders moisturiser by mail order.The health freak.That sort of thing.'
'The golf fiend with an analytical mind who cooks the perfect risotto and plays the futures market for recreation.' After she had said this, she was visited by the unsettling thought that it could almost be a description of her first husband,Charlie.
'You got it. It could be the basis of a new game.'They enjoyed games of all sorts – board, parlour and particularly word.
'So, do you like Tony?'
'Do I fancy him, do you mean? Nice bum, very perky. He's quite a presentable package overall, isn't he? Quite a cutie.'
'I didn't mean do you fancy him. I meant, do you like him?'
Guy looked at her.'Is there a difference?'
C. is so sweet & kind. It's ironic, I know I could do anything – turn into a raving nympho or an axe murderer, anything at all, not even within reason – and he'd forgive me. He'd never leave me.And he'd always have me back.Whereas with Mischa it's the opposite. I don't think he'd care two hoots if I was a serial ki
ller, but I know instinctively that he would finish things instantly if I was unfaithful. And I'm the same. If I discovered he had killed somebody it wouldn't matter to me one whit. But if he slept with another woman now it would destroy everything.
I think this is the definition of true love, and I'd never realised it before. It's all or nothing, and you must be prepared to make great sacrifices for it. Even to the lengths of giving up the things and the people you previously held dear. I think it can only happen this way, when you can see no alternative except to tear everything apart in order to be with someone.This is what defines a grand passion, what sets it on another planet from the pallid feelings other people mistake for love.
What I feel about Mischa is categorically different from how it is with me and C. It's like the gulf between Anne of Green Gables and Anna Karenina. Or between lazing in a bath and hurtling over Niagara Falls.
The tragedy is that I'll never be able to explain it to C., and he will never understand, although I know he will forgive.
Greer had a clear memory of composing this entry. She had been in bed, propped against pillows, a mug of cocoa on the bedside table, brought by her solicitous husband. After a grimy day's travel lugging their cases on to a ferry and a change of planes, he was relaxing in the bath listening to music.
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata wafted from the bathroom radio down the passage on a current of newly warmed air. The liquid notes of the piano were almost drowned out by the downpour on the iron roof of their mud brick house. She had always loved the sound of rain drumming on a roof, but that night she found it mournful and oppressive.
She remembered feeling complacent about the last three paragraphs.They had taken no time to compose, in a concentrated spurt before Charlie emerged from the bath. Scribbling them down had been, like Stella's telephone call yesterday, only a brief respite from the weight of anxieties.
Now, re-reading those lines which she had once thought self-evidently true and with which she had been so satisfied, she marvelled at their presumption.They were like the proverbial young wine in this respect. And like a cocky young wine, their confidence was to some degree misplaced.There was a vulnerability clinging to the words,and a residue of sadness, so strongly present to her now that she knew it must have been sensed at least subliminally by the writer.
She picked up her pen. In the space at the bottom of the page, she wrote:
17th April 2006
That is not a definition of true love, of course. It's a description of a certain type and stage of love.There can be no single definition, because love takes infinite forms. Perhaps one has to be the age I am now to begin to understand this.
The difference with me and C.
She paused, and crossed this out. She began the sentence again.
The difference was not that Charlie and I didn't love each other while Mischa and I did.The difference was that Charlie loved me deeply, but I was not in love with him.
She laid her pen down and meditated, remembering the piano and the rain, and the clinging sadness.Then she wrote:
And I knew this, but was not brave enough to say it.
'It'll soon be time to put out the ping-pong table.'
Greer and Tony were on the wide lower terrace in wicker chairs, making the most of the fading afternoon sun. They both wore hats,Tony's an old Panama from the rack in his house, one of Rollo's discards. Looked down on from above we must resemble a companionable couple, Greer thought, as if he's an old friend. Or the son of one. It was a sharply destabilising thought, and she shoved it aside.
Tony's little recorder stood on a cane table between them. Its demeanour was reticent and neutral, but she couldn't look at it without wondering what other voices it had heard. What disclosures had it been privy to on the journey that led to this destination?
'Ping-pong? You play down here? That's cool.'
'We play a lot before dinner in summer. Mischa, Guy and I, and anyone else we can rope in. Even Rollo sometimes, although he tends to plant himself in one place and refuse to move. Mischa's surprisingly good. Ferociously competitive.' She gave a laugh. 'We've got photos of him wielding the bat. I'll dig out a good one for you.'
Tony made a note in the pad that sat semi-permanently on his knee. For this alfresco interview he had changed into a white t-shirt and denim shorts, faded and frayed, worn with sneakers and no socks. There were no laces in his sneakers either, she noted. His legs and arms were tanned and toned. He looked like an advertisement for gym membership.
'So, can we talk a bit about your first husband, Charlie McNicoll. He was a management consultant, right?'
'Charlie? Why do you need to know about him?'
Greer was right on the qui vive with this topic, but covertly. She was pleased with the conversational, almost offhand way she put the question. As if it was of no particular import one way or another.
Tony answered in the same throwaway fashion.'It's just background, but useful, I guess, because you and he were an item when you ran into Mischa. On that red-letter day.' He produced an engaging smile. 'Charlie has a minor supporting role, a bit-part. He's only an adjunct to the main drama.'
'He's a two-bit actor, do you mean? Or a rung up from that?'
A grin.'At least one rung,but probably not three.'
'What can I tell you?' Is there anything you don't know? Or would you rather hear me incriminate myself in my own words?
'Let's trawl back in time to your first meeting, for starters.When and where was that?'
'We met in London. At a party, the usual thing. He'd been working over there for a few years, at McKinsey's. I was twenty-five, I'd been based in London for three years too, sharing flats, saving money from endless temp jobs and then racing off to do Europe on the cheap.'
'Young and fancy-free. Sounds like fun.'
'It was on the whole, yes.'
'But tough too? A bit of a roller-coaster ride?'
'There were highs and lows, inevitably. But it was a good experience, to be independent and away from home on the other side of the world.We couldn't afford to phone home in those days – long-distance was far too expensive.'
'And no texting or emails either. Things were a whole lot different then, huh? It must have been character-building, overall.'The blue eyes betrayed only polite interest.
'Oh, it was exceptionally character-building.'
It was really quite an art, how inscrutable he contrived to be. And the picture of languid contentment. He leant back, tilting his hat against the sun.
'Then, after three years of this, you met Charlie McNicoll. Can you give me a verbal portrait of Charlie?'
This was the point at which she could say, why ask that? When I'm almost certain you have already met him yourself and formed your own opinion.
She considered saying this. She hadn't heard Charlie's name spoken out loud by anyone for years. Nor had she said it very often to herself in the privacy of her own mind. Nonetheless, her image of him was as clear, as pristine, as it had ever been.
'He stood out. He was rather classical-looking – tall and dark.' She hesitated. 'Charlie was kempt, as opposed to Mischa, who is definitely unkempt.'
Tony nodded. 'Uh-huh. That's a neat summation. Do you have any photos I could take a look at? From the time you knew him?'
'I may have kept one.' She felt a surge of antagonism. 'But I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what he looks like.' She thought, that's put paid to the matey little thing you thought we had going.
'We're talking thirty years ago, Greer. I'm interested in how he appeared to you, back then. Give me a thumbnail sketch.' His voice was conciliatory but surprisingly firm.
She replied with peremptory speed, ticking the items off her fingers.
'He was sporty, a rower and fast bowler. He came from an old Western District family – that's a rich farming area in the state of Victoria. He was estranged from his family. He'd been to Harvard Business School, he was thirty-one, six years older than me. He was quite worldly, knew his
way round menus and wine, had friends with country houses and villas in Provence. Is that enough for you?'
Tony was unfazed.'He didn't get on with his family?'
'He'd refused to take over the business, the family farm. It caused a rift.'
'What did you think of his parents?'
'I never met them.' She had suspicions about this line of questioning.
'He was earning good money in London, I guess?'
'Yes, he was already very successful.'
'An impressive kind of guy. Not surprising you fell for each other.'
Encrypted here, she could tell, was a glib romantic cameo Tony had drawn up for himself.After leading a fairly rackety existence for three years, the young and susceptible Greer Gordon encounters the well-off, sophisticated Charles McNicoll, a distinct cut above the shabby crew she's been associating with, and eligible to boot. She snaps him up, tout de suite.
She felt an urgent need to correct this Mills & Boon scenario, not only for her own sake but for Charlie's dignity. At least let him be the initial instigator of his fate, rather than a pawn to be duped twice over.She said more gently,'It was not quite like that, actually.'
There was a distinct beat before Tony turned his head and looked at her.'It wasn't? How was it,then?'
At least he had the grace to acknowledge the unspoken sequence of images in his mental viewfinder. She turned it over in her mind. It was Charles who had fallen head over heels for her, not the other way round, who had pursued her single-mindedly for the next four years, who had brought up the m word very early on.And who,eventually,had worn her down.Well, that was one way of putting it.
'Charlie was – still is, I expect – an exceptional person,' she said. 'That scarce commodity: a genuinely good man, if you know what I mean.'
She made rare eye contact with Tony as she delivered this light but potentially insulting remark. Would he have any idea what a genuinely good man was like? He was nodding. The spruce, photogenic face that Guy found so cute wore an earnest expression.
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